You may, in this case also, justify yourself as having been quite true to nature, but I doubt whether you will be able to do this as regards the “sentimental” demands of your readers; and therefore—­in order that nothing should interfere with the reader’s acceptance of a scene which is so splendidly motivated and so well worked out—­I would advise you to pay some attention to it.

Otherwise, I find everything you do with Mignon, when living as well as when dead, most uncommonly beautiful.  This pure and poetic creature is specially and excellently qualified to have so poetical a funeral.  In her isolated condition, her mysterious existence, her purity and innocence, she is so truly a representative of the period of life in which she stands that she moves one to a feeling of unmixed sadness and genuine human sorrow, for nothing but pure humanity was manifested in her.  That which, in every other individual, would be inconsistent, nay, in a certain sense, revolting, is, in her, sublime and noble.

I should have liked to see the appearance of the Marquis in the family motivated by something more than his mere dilettanteism in art.  He is too indispensable to the development, and the need of his interference might easily have been made more conspicuous than the inner necessity.  You have yourself spoilt the reader by the arrangement of the rest of your work, and have justified him in making greater demands than can generally be required of novel writers.  Could not the Marquis be made an old acquaintance of Lothar or of the Uncle, and his journey hither be more interwoven with the whole?

The end, as well as the whole history of the Harpist, excites the greatest interest.  I have already said how excellent I find your thought of deriving the terrible destinies of the Harpist and of Mignon from religious extravagance.  The priest’s notion of describing a small transgression as monstrous, in order that a great crime—­which he will not mention for humanity’s sake—­may be atoned for by it, is sublime of its kind and a worthy representative of this whole mode of thinking.  You might perhaps make Sperate’s story a little shorter still, as it comes in at the end where one is prone to hurry impatiently to the goal.

That the Harpist should prove to be Mignon’s father, and that you yourself do not mention it or thrust it at the reader, makes the effect all the greater.  One is forced to reflect upon the fact oneself, to recall to mind how close in life was the relation which existed between these two mysterious natures, and to look down into an unfathomable depth of fate.  But no more for today.  My wife wishes to inclose a little note to tell you her impressions of your Eighth Book.